Achievement(s):
Emma Peel in The Avengers.
Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's
Secret Service.
CBE - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1988).
DBE - Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1994)

Biography:

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE was an
actress, who was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, however, she lived
in Bikaner, India from when she was only 2 months old until she was 8,
due to her father working as a railway executive there; which explains
why Rigg can speak fluent Hindi.

She was then sent to a Moravian
boarding school in Fulneck, near Pudsey; she disliked her boarding school,
where she felt like a fish out of water, but she believes that Yorkshire
played a greater part in shaping her character than India did.

She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Rigg is particularly known for her role in the British 1960s television
series The Avengers, where she played the secret agent Mrs. Emma Peel
for 51 episodes between 1965 and 1967; she tried out for the role of
Emma Peel on a whim, without ever having seen the programme.

Her career in film, television and the theatre has been wide-ranging,
including roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1959 and 1964;
her professional debut was in The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1955 at
age 17.

Although she was hugely successful in the role of Emma Peel, she did
not like the lack of privacy that television brought; she also did not
like the way that she was treated by ABC Weekend TV; after a dozen episodes
she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman.

For the second series she held out for a raise in pay from £150
a week to £450, but there was still no question of her staying
for a third year; Patrick Macnee, her co-star in the series, noted that
Rigg had later told him that she considered Macnee and her driver to
be her only friends on the set; after leaving The Avengers she appeared
as the title character in the telemovie The Marquise, which was based
on a play by Noël Coward.

She also returned to the stage, including playing two Tom Stoppard
leads, Ruth Carson in Night and Day and Dorothy Moore in Jumpers; a
nude scene with Keith Michell in Abelard and Heloise led to a notorious
description of her as 'built like a brick basilica with insufficient
flying buttresses', by the acerbic critic John Simon; in 1982, she appeared
in a musical called Colette, based on the life of the French writer
and created by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, but it closed during an
American tour en route to Broadway and in 1986, she took a leading role
in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies.

On the big screen she became a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret
Service (1969), playing Tracy Bond, James Bond's only wife; she said
she took the role with the hope that she would become well known in
America; throughout the filming of the movie, there were rumours that
the experience was not a happy one, owing to a personality clash with
Bond actor George Lazenby; the rumors may have arisen from a reporter
witnessing her say "I'm having garlic for lunch George Lazenby
I hope you are!" before a love scene between the two; however,
both Rigg and Lazenby have denied the claims and both wrote off the
garlic comment as a joke.

Her other films include The Assassination Bureau in 1969, The Hospital
in 1971, Theatre of Blood in 1973, In This House of Brede in 1975, A
Little Night Music in 1977 and as Lady Holiday in the 1981 film The
Great Muppet Caper.

In the 1980s, after reading stinging reviews of a stage performance
she had given, Rigg was inspired to compile the worst theatrical reviews
she could find into a tongue-in-cheek, and best-selling compilation,
entitled No Turn Unstoned.

In 1981 she appeared in a Yorkshire Television production of Hedda
Gabler in the title role; in 1982 she received acclaim for her performance
as Arlena Stuart Marshall in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's
Evil Under the Sun; in 1983 she appeared in a Granada Television production
of King Lear, starring Laurence Olivier in the title role, as Regan
the king's treacherous second daughter; in 1985 she co-starred with
Denholm Elliot in a BBC production of Bleak House, a novel by Charles
Dickens; in 1988 she played the Wicked Queen in the Cannon adaptation
of Snow White; in 1989 she played Helena Vesey in Mother Love for the
BBC; her portrayal of an obsessive mother who was prepared to do anything,
even murder, to keep control of her son won Rigg the 1989 BAFTA for
best actress and in 1989 she appeared in the BBC adaptation of Alice
Thomas Ellis' Unexplained Laughter, alongside Elaine Paige.

In 1986, she presented the Scottish Television series Held in Trust,
which focused on the work of the National Trust for Scotland and some
of its most famous treasures.

In the 1990s, she had triumphs with roles at the Almeida Theatre in
Islington; these included Medea in 1993, for which she received the
Best Actress Tony Award, Mother Courage in 1995 and Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? in 1996.

On television she has appeared as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, winning
an Emmy Award in the process; the mother-in-law in the PBS production
Moll Flanders, as the amateur detective Mrs. Bradley in The Mrs Bradley
Mysteries; in 1992 she also played Mme. Colbert Chief Vendeuse to the
fashion house of Dior in Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris and in 2000 she played
Gladys Mitchell's detective, Dame Beatrice Adela Le Strange Bradley,
an eccentric old woman who worked for Scotland Yard as a pathologist.

From 1989 until 2003, she hosted the PBS television series Mystery!,
taking over from Vincent Price, her co-star from Theatre of Blood.

Rigg has continued to perform on stage; in 2004, she appeared as Violet
Venable in Sheffield Theatres' production of Tennessee Williams's play
Suddenly Last Summer, which enjoyed a successful national tour; in 2006
she appeared at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End in a drama entitled
Honour which had a limited but successful run; in 2007, she appeared
as Huma Rojo in the Old Vic's production of All About My Mother, adapted
by Samuel Adamson and based on the film of the same title directed by
Pedro Almodóvar; in 2008 she appeared in The Cherry Orchard at
the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in
Noël Coward's Hay Fever.

Although she does not consider herself a singer, her performances in
A Little Night Music, Follies and other stage musicals have been well
received by audiences and critics alike; she made a highly memorable
appearance on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1975, in which
she played Nell Gwynne in a musical pastiche, joining Eric and Ernie
to sing “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When
You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?”.

She also appeared in the second season of Ricky Gervais' hit comedy,
Extras, alongside Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe and in the 2006
film, The Painted Veil.

Rigg is a Patron of International Care & Relief and was for many
years the public face of the charity's child sponsorship scheme; she
was also Chancellor of the University of Stirling, being succeeded by
James Naughtie when her ten year term of office ended on 31 July 2008.